


this deadly dance we do

by queenrinacat



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, i put mature just to be safe, its more like teen to mature but eh, my precious angsty bbys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:04:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5388512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenrinacat/pseuds/queenrinacat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina stands in her kitchen in the dark, mourning Emma. The Dark Swan decides to pay her a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this deadly dance we do

The kitchen is dark this time of night, the blue glow from the clock reading 1:52 AM casting the counter in pale light. Your feet are cold even through slippers, but you stand in your darkened kitchen anyway. You pace over to the cabinet, retrieve a glass and a bottle of your trusty scotch and watch the amber liquid pour.

You down half of it in one gulp, hoping the burn of the alcohol can warm you. You are so cold now, always cold and you can’t get warm, ever since Emma stupidly sacrificed her goddamn soul for you  _(my fault my fault)_ and you watched, helpless, when twining hungry strands of darkness like an oil slick took away someone you realized too late you couldn’t bear to live without,  _(beautiful, sweet, brave Emma)_ sinking into her skin and devouring everything she is  _(my Emma.)_ Emma was always full of light, like she held the sun in her palms and you felt so warm when she touched you, suffused with something strong and  _important_ in a way you’ve never felt with Robin. Emma’s…different, always has been, has always been  _important_ like Henry is important. Emma matters. You never bothered to think why; you just accepted that Emma had built herself a room in your heart with her strong, gentle hands, because for all the strong emotions surging in your throat whenever she was near, being with Emma felt  _right,_ like breathing after being starved for air.

\------ 

The clock reads 2:16.

 

There is a song silenced inside of you that she took with her. You don’t like to speak anymore, don’t like to hear their voices because none of them are  _hers,_ everything too harsh and dissonant. This new Emma is yours and not yours, bits and pieces of herself showing through the cracks in the Dark One’s armor. The Dark One’s voice isn’t a melody like Emma’s was, light-hearted and full of warmth, but a broken tune sounding from the ringing of glass bottles smashing against a wall, shattering into pieces and cutting you from underfoot. It breaks your heart into a thousand tiny pieces to hear her, feels like nails on a chalkboard to look at Emma-but-not-Emma and feel every fiber of your being pulled towards her, having to fight the urge to hold her face in your hands and demand that she  _come to your senses this instant, Emma, I swear to god._

You gulp back the rest and fill the glass again.

\------ 

2:48.

 

You feel hollow still and cold to the marrow of your bones, empty empty empty with a yawning chasm in your chest where she used to be. There’s a heavy ache in your chest and a knot in your stomach you can’t explain, so you just stare with blank eyes that see nothing at all, standing alone in the too-big kitchen (but just the right size for—

_—you, standing at the stove making pancakes while Emma perches on the countertop next to you, and Henry sits on a stool reading a comic. Emma swipes with her finger at the batter, and you slap her hand for that, making her pull out puppy-dog eyes and a pout. It doesn’t work on you. Mostly. And even if it did, you’d never tell her, but you think she knows. It would explain why she uses it all the time._

It has just enough space for _—_

 _—Henry, sneaking up behind you both to sprinkle flour on your heads before snorting and dodging away. It starts a flour fight and you burn the pancakes and have to start again, but you can’t be angry about that, not when Emma is smiling at you with a bit of flour at the corner of her mouth that you want to lick off and Henry is smiling without a trace of shadows on his face at the both of you, the three of you free and light in a way you never thought you’d achieve. You’ve fought for so many years for this, for laughter and light and sock ice-skating in the hall even after you’ve told them off for it, and your heart is so full it squeezes the air from your lungs.)_  

You let the memories wash over you and let yourself miss your little family the way you would never let yourself with anyone else around, but it’s 3:21 in the morning and there are tears burning in your eyes when you stand in that damned dark empty kitchen with loneliness whispering in the walls. You do your best to blink them away. You smooth your thumb across the crystal of the tumbler, shake it and watch the scotch swirl.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

You startle violently, dropping the tumbler and hitting your elbow against the counter, making you wince in pain. Emma ( _not Emma, the Dark One_ ) snatches it deftly from the air, taking a gulp before placing it on the countertop. You don’t know why part of you aches at that, seeing Emma so lithe and graceful when before she could manage to trip on air.

“Emma,” you say, taking a deep breath through your nose. “What are you doing here?”

The Dark One smirks, spreads her arms wide.

“Maybe I just felt like a visit.”

“You couldn’t have picked a more appropriate time?”

Emma shrugs, and takes a step toward you. You tense, then take another deep breath, trying to force it to dissipate. You see that she saw you when she stills completely, something like guilt flashing behind her eyes. The mask slips back on, and she smiles coldly.

“How’s the boy toy? Bored of him yet?”

You blink at her, completely lost.

“What, I…Robin?” You scoff. “He’s not a boy toy, or whatever ridiculous nickname you’ve pulled from UrbanDictionary.com. It’s called a relationship, Miss Swan, something you seem to be having trouble understanding these days.”

“Really? Cause the way I see it,  _Madame Mayor,_ you seem to have an awful lot of fun stringing people along, making them want you,  _using them_ and having no problem with moving on once they’re dry as a husk.”

“Is that really what you think I did to you?” You demand, furious. “How can you say that? Especially after all we’ve been through, how could you?”

Emma laughs hollowly.

“Probably the same way you can think you can ask anything of me after all you owe me. Come on. You can’t seriously expect me to believe you didn’t know what you were doing, wearing fuck-me heels and expecting that to be enough to make me kneel.”

She begins to stalk—no,  _slink,_ this is more sinuous than a stalk—towards you, icy eyes burning above a sardonic sneer, the Dark One out in full force. You refuse to back away, but hold your ground, looking her directly in the eye with defiance written on your face. She stops a foot from you, before she takes a step, then another. She’s so close now you can feel her brush against you with every breath, your chests pressed together and faces inches apart. She’s warmer than you expected, the heat of her skin belying the pallor of her face and hair like frost creeping up a window.

You swallow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Emma smiles slowly, and leans closer, closer even than the two of you would argue when still at odds (you really had no concept of personal space then, did you). Emma’s breath is ghosting across your lips now, and you shiver with equal parts revulsion and desire.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about this,” she murmurs, lips brushing against yours with every syllable. “Haven’t thought about  _us._ ” She molds herself closer to you, backing you against the counter. The cool marble edge presses into your lower back, and you struggle to remember that this is  _a bad idea, a terrible idea_ because this isn’t Emma, this is the Dark One, but somehow none of that seems real, not when you’re alone in the dark and it’s so late it’s morning, not when even just the light brush of Emma’s fingers over your wrist makes you feel like your cheeks are on fire.

“Remember when we first met, and you offered me apple cider?”

She’s moved from your lips to your neck, whispering into it so it tickles slightly, and you don’t know if it’s a reprieve or not. Your eyelids flutter closed, and you would never admit it but you let yourself revel in her body against yours. (And do your best to quiet the guilty whispers in your ears when you do.)

“You were wearing that gray dress that wrapped around you so well. I wanted to be the one wrapped around you, to push you up against the wall and tear that damn dress off of you.”

“Emma,” you breathe, but your muscles are locked and you can’t move, can’t bring yourself to  _act,_ and it’s pathetic that you who once lived by impulse and the forward charge into battle find yourself immobilized, mesmerized by this Emma full of icy jagged edges instead of the warm sunshine you’re used to (and used to feel when she was near.)

“Remember when I  _did,_ got the uptight Madame Mayor to bend over her desk for me while I finger fucked you from behind and you snapped commands even when you came? Or in Neverland, when we fucked against a tree and pretended it never happened? Or those times in my car on the way to meet your  _soulmate,_ ” she sneers, “but there weren’t any sisters or soulmates on the way to New York, were there, not when you were so ready and willing and screaming my name in the backseat, behind a bar, in a hotel room…”

You swallow hard, close your eyes and shake your head imperceptibly back and forth, trying to shut out the seductive rasp of her voice. Even with profanities falling from her lips, this new Emma ( _Dark One the Dark One_ but you can’t think about that now) is smooth and sinuous as a snake, and you could easily see yourself constricted in her coils. ( _I would probably enjoy it._ )

“Really?” Emma’s fingers trail down your side, the light touch raising goosebumps and catching the breath in your throat. Pale fingers pause at the hem of your shirt, and caress the skin there between your shirt and the waistband of your pyjamas. You jolt imperceptibly, and you don’t want (to want) to but you almost can’t help arcing into her a little more. You curse your body for betraying you and pray she doesn’t notice, but her answering chuckle tells you she does.

“Maybe this will help you remember,” she murmurs, and then her lips are crashing against yours and  _oh god_ you can’t believe you’d forgotten how much you missed this, missed her lips against yours and the flash of heat low in your stomach. You open your mouth, kiss her back passionately, desperately, clutching her back to pull her close, closer still, and feel her tongue and teeth slide against yours when she bites your bottom lip, tugs. She slips a thigh between yours, pressing against your center and you roll your hips against it, whimpering. The warmth isn’t just a flash of heat now, it’s a flood making you throb between your legs with the pounding of your heart, painful and burning with need. You’re not cold anymore, but full of heat suffusing every part of you, and your blood is singing with  _Emma, Emma, Emma,_  here and with you and clutching you as desperately as you clutch her.

It feels angry like it hasn’t in a long time, longing like it has for a while, full of passion and desire like it always has. Through the haze of  _Emma, Emma_ over your mind, it takes a moment to realize Emma is speaking to you, harsh vowels falling from her mouth even as she kisses her way down your neck and unbuttons your shirt.

“He thinks he’s enough to keep you satisfied,” a button pops off, and Emma bites where your collarbone and neck meet.

“He doesn’t know how you used to come to me,” Emma’s removed your shirt, and kneads one of your breasts roughly, tweaks a nipple as you hiss. You yank her hair free of her bun in retaliation, thread your fingers through it and  _pull._

“Practically dripping, and we’d fuck—” Emma grabs your ass and squeezes, pulls you closer and helps you grind against her thigh, placing open mouthed kisses on your breasts and climbing back up to your neck, sucking at a spot just below your ear. You rub your leg between hers in return, and grin when she chokes. “—until the sun came up,” she finishes with a gasp.

The throbbing between your legs is growing more pronounced now, and you’ve never been a very patient woman. You try and slip your hand down but she grabs your wrist before you can try and touch yourself, interlacing your fingers. You drop your head forward, kiss her neck and bite, the sound of both of your breaths harsh and ragged in the quiet. You’ve started to keen softly, already embarrassingly close, and rock harder, irritated at your unsatisfied state of affairs beyond words, and tug impatiently at Emma’s shirt.  _She is wearing far too many clothes._ You manage to get a hand up her shirt and under her bra, and Emma starts to breathe in rapid bursts, biting your neck. The heat feels like fire now, stoked until unbearably hot, flames licking between your legs, everywhere Emma touches you skin on skin, kissesbitesnips you, and how the hell you’ve lived this long without her you don’t know. You extricate your hand from her shirt to grab her behind the neck and yank her towards you, needing to feel her tongue against yours, needing her mouth as Emma, Emma, pulls noises from you that you’d quiet if you could but you don’t think you can.

“I was obsessed with you, consumed, and you fucking knew it, didn’t you?”

She’s running a hand up and down your bare abdomen now, brushing your breasts and circling around a nipple without touching it with one finger and you can barely understand a word she’s saying because you want to cry from frustration.  _Goddammit, is one orgasm too much to ask?_

“Loved to tease, to  _taunt_ me with how unfairly fucking sexy you are, swaying in those skirts and power suits and leaving just enough buttons undone that you could get whatever you wanted.”

She bites your neck, hard, and you give her hair another yank, claw at her neck and back, scoring her stomach with red lines.

“And I was an idiot who would have worshipped you, given you everything again and again, gave you my  _soul_ thinking you’d notice me, stupid, desperate, deluded  _fool._ ”

She finally,  _finally,_ presses two fingers against you, still over your clothes (pants regrettably still on, shirt hanging loosely from your arms) but you jerk anyways, surge against her and try to pull her closeclosercloser still, kisses full of teeth and tongue, sloppy and careless but you’re half out of your mind with how much you’ve missed this, missed  _her,_  and technique is frankly the last thing on your mind. You need her skin on yours, need her warmth pressed against you to chase away the cold that creeps up softly in the dark, whispering  _come away with me_ and  _Emma doesn’t love you no-one does_ and  _I can ease your pain_ and other, darker, sweet nothings that you don’t understand and understand too well.

You’ve always noticed her, you don’t say, been obsessed with her in turn and alive with the fire and fight you’d missed (cursed townspeople are unfortunately placid) that she brought when she smashed her way into your life with a battering ram. You’ve always been drawn to her, furious and fascinated and pulled by a force you can’t explain, a satellite pulled inexorably into her orbit. Emma is and always has been impossibly magnetic, a force of nature radiating a kind of charisma and effortless charm even as she hurls devastation like a hurricane into your life with a smug self-righteousness and a challenging smirk. You want to say  _I’ve loved you for years now,_ want to explain how colliding with her made you shatter into a mosaic more beautiful than you thought possible, that your heart has begun to crumble and rot seeing her like this, cold and masked behind the mazes and layers of walls she puts up to hide the lonely, abandoned little girl (it breaks your heart and you hurt and you hate that you could ever be the reason Emma Swan is in pain). You don’t tell her that you can never repay her for giving you your son once and again ten years later, that you never thought the three of you could create a family so fragile and flawed and perfect. (You certainly don’t tell her you want to give her the world.)

You want to say so many things, but your voice isn’t working, locked in your throat and the truths it might utter chained to stay close to your chest. You want to  _show_ her, to worship her like she has you and still does, no matter how much she pretends to hate you. (You’re a little in awe, too, at the thought that Emma could care for you still, even with darkness choking her soul.) You try to disentangle the hand she still holds fast, slide it down between Emma’s legs but she bats it away.

“I  _loved_ you,” she hisses almost mockingly, though whether she’s laughing at herself or you is hard to tell. You try to suppress the pang of hurt at love _d,_ past tense. It doesn’t work. Instead, you squeeze your eyes shut and say the worst possible thing you could at that moment.

“I know.”

You open your eyes to look at her, your faces still only a hairsbreadth apart and oh, there’s your Emma, a flash of vulnerability and hurt and anger in her eyes before her face relaxes into cool indifference.

“I see,” she says, and wrenches away from you in one smooth move, three feet from you now and face inscrutable, layered with shadows. The air of the kitchen is too cold without her warmth like a hearth fire pressed against you, and you wrap your arms around yourself. You realize you’re bare and quickly tug your shirt back on, holding it closed with shoulders slightly hunched, nervous hands twisting the fabric.

Reality comes crashing down, and it’s like a bucket of cold water.

“Emma we—we can’t. This was a bad idea.”

“My favorite thing.”

“You…” You gesture helplessly in her direction. “You have…you have a person. Emma. I thought you were happy.”

“You made your choice, so I made mine.”

“You can’t seriously blame me—”

“For picking some random asshole with a tattoo when you  _knew,_ you knew and never told me?”

“For trying for some happiness! For trying to stop standing in my own way for once!”

“Yeah, he’s your soulmate. I heard. Congrats, I guess, or whatever the fuck else you’re supposed to say when a dead wife that’s really a crazy sister breaks up two soulmates, but hey, it’s fine, it’s great, they’re back together now. Break out the champagne!”

You fall silent. For the first time in a while, that word raises bile in the back of your throat, and you try to push out words like  _inevitable_ and  _destiny_ and  _fate_ (hadn’t you been trying to avoid that? hadn’t both of you?). You don’t think about  _I make my own destiny_ or  _let’s make today the day we both beat fate_ (you especially don’t think about  _but maybe I need you_ ) because you’re so tired, weary to the bone of fighting the riptide that pulls you under every time you try to breathe free air. Robin ( _isn’t Emma_ )is a good man, ( _boring_ ) doesn’t argue ( _doesn’t challenge you like Emma has, like Emma always has_ ) and fate seems determined to dictate every second of your life and if it’s led here that’s not so bad ( _she made you feel like you deserve more than that_ ).

You decide to swim, if only for a moment.

“I did too.”

Emma seems to surface from somewhere deep, blinking clear eyes fogged over with her own thoughts.

“What?”

You clear your throat.

“I did too. But Emma…”

Emma’s eyes, which had lit up with hope (it makes your heart ache to make Emma hurt, to see Emma behind the practiced sneer and push her farther in) begin to dim again.

“You have Hook,” you try again, impotently. You wish your voice didn’t trail off at the end of that (wish even harder that Emma missed the slight rise in your voice at the end that made it feel like a question).

“And you have Robin,” she murmurs.

You swallow hard and look at her, your heart trying to pound out of your ribcage. You try with your eyes to communicate everything you’re feeling, the thousand different contradictory messages you want and desperately don’t to send. You  _want,_ you want so much and desperately, almost violently with the force of your need. You don’t know what you want but every vein and pulsing artery of you is straining towards Emma with the strength of four years locked in a deadly dance, both of you pushing you to the brink but never over the edge of the cliff. Your emotions have been upended, scattered over the floor like files from neatly organized drawers you never meant to open, and you’re adrift in nonsense ( _soulmates_ ) and confusion ( _Emma is so lovely when she smiles_ ) and you don’t understand, you dontyoudont but what else can you do?

You never meant to fall in love with Emma Swan.

(Un)luckily for you Emma seems to read what you couldn’t, and strides towards you in a movement too fast to be entirely human.

And then her mouth is on yours again, bruising and harsh and you hate yourself when you kiss back for a moment (who knows when or if you can ever kiss Emma Swan again, so you allow yourself this luxury) before shoving her away, trying not to look at kiss-swollen lips, long hair free of a bun making her hard edges look so much softer with strands floating in front of her face, the love bites on her neck.

You brace your hands against the countertop, and look away.

“I think you should go.”

You dare a glance her way, and she stands frozen, at a loss and staring at you with burning… _something_ in her eyes, need or lust or hatred or something else you don’t know. Even with her hair and clothes mussed, she looks like a statue in the darkness, skin pale as marble, completely still and deathly silent. You don’t even breathe, and long moments pass with both of you suspended in time.

She vanishes in a curl of black smoke, and your arms are suddenly too weak to hold you. You slump, jelly-legged, to the floor, hands trembling.

 

This time, when the tears come, you let them fall.


End file.
